Preface
So, here he is – I am sitting on the neck of Mama Olukh, interrupting random earnings and dreaming about the career of the developer of games. Once, returning from the celebrations of the New Year, I, tired and tired (but, I want to note – sober!) burst into the apartment. Dissolving in the sheet of his unexpectedly very comfortable bed, I fell asleep.
But instead of the next terrible vision about how I am sitting at a desk at school, I came even a more terrible dream: Comrade Cat nicknamed Mimi and Comrade Pyot (without nickname), sitting on construction equipment dug stones and laying asphalt on the ground. Like chess figures, they moved along the board, pushing over obstacles and blocking each other’s path. Somewhere against the background, I waved the flags of lead in the construction helmet, but then in history it will no longer appear.
I woke up, brushed cold sweat from the greasy forehead and tried to digest what kind of horror I just saw. In my head, automatically, in Lovecraft Unnaturally, the idea of creating a game was born. Yes, not just a game, but some kind of puzzle. And so that in it comrade cat and comrade dog build roads. And so that right u-ouh! Fortunately, I already had the experience of doing small toys, so I did not have to scratch my head over all kinds of unity or gammakers. It’s a pity only finances sang romances, which means that the development of the game should be conducted with zero costs.
Our goal: to make a game without spending a penny, and to sell at least one copy.
Brief Likbez about licenses
So, we make the game ourselves and without cash costs. Therefore, if you are not a reaper, shove and a player on the dud, then you will inevitably have borrow this or that intellectual property. Borrow! Do not steal!
If at least one paid element is in our project, then its commercial implementation will be impossible, unless you are ready to take a chance, albeit small, but still a chance to get into legal problems. We do not need this, and therefore, before turning to open access resources, we need to study under what license they spread.
At the time of writing, the most common types of “creative” licenses are Creative Commons licenses.
Since we need to sell the game, from a whole bunch of various licenses we need to choose those that will allow us to commercially implement our project. For such purposes, CC has a convenient reduction in NC (non-commercial). If you see it, it means that the work for selfish purposes will not work.
Consider the rest of the licenses more closely:
CC0 – Public Domain – the work was released in free swimming and is in public access. Do what you want with him, you can not even mention the author, although this is quite mean. I personally mentioned.
CC by – free distribution – ANCHOR will be here the work is free for any use, but you are obliged to mention the author.
CC by-nd-distribution without changes – the work is free to use. You must mention the author. But you cannot in any way change or distort the original work.
T.e. If you use any musical track in the project, then you must use it in its original form. No remixes and all that. Rather sensitive license, which I personally do not recommend using.
CC by-SA-distribution in a similar license – the work is free to use. You must mention the author. But if you change or distort the starting work, then you must distribute it under the CC By-SA license.
T.e. If you use any musical track in the project, but you remik it to your taste, then anyone can then extract it and use it according to CC by-SA license, even if your project is commercial.
These are the main licenses, the brief practice of the application of which I described. But in fact, I recommend that you personally visit the site Common Creative (part of the articles there is translated into Russian, which is very convenient) to carefully study every license. This will help you not only today, but also in the future, if you decide to thoroughly step on the path of any creativity.
So, we need a engine or any designer that allows us to use it absolutely free of charge and sell games without a license. Such designers and engines are full.
For example, Unity allows free use, provided that the annual income from games does not exceed 100 thousand dollars. Pretty generous, yes?
Cryengine asks 5% from income only if they exceed 5 thousand dollars a year.
Unreal Engine 4 – no more than 3 thousand dollars per quarter. Otherwise – pay for a license. But also not bad.
And you can continue this list to infinity, but I am a simple person, and therefore chose Construct Classic. Why exactly him? Well, firstly, it was an alternative to Game Maker 8 at one time.1, and secondly, the designer is distributed according to the GPL 2 license.0, but at the same time the games created in it do not inherit this license. In other words: the designer is free, do what you want, the source code of the project you have the right not to show anyone. Selling games-by self, of course, you can. Beauty!
In addition, the designer works on Directx9, and therefore, projects on it are very operational and are launched without complaints even on Win10, although at the time of the creation of the designer the immortal “Semelka” has just been released. And for a commercial project, the performance of how important is.
If you are interested in dig into the constructor, then on the official website Scirra There is a link to Sourceforge With the latest version of this. The designer forums, unfortunately, have long been frozen, but still available for reading. And the forums of the second version contain a bunch of answers useful for the first. So, go for it!
Oh, I studied at a music school, but unfortunately they do not do composers there, so you have to borrow other people’s works in the musical sphere.
Of all the sites with music, my personal favorite is FMA, he Free Music Archive. The most convenient in it is the possibility of sorting tracks not only by genres and BPM’Am, but also by licenses. It is immediately clear what you can bite for, but for what you can’t. There are many tracks, many authors leave links to their SoundCloud’y if they have them. So FMA compatibility is 100% under our needs.
Behind the sound effects (Khrty music is also) I go to the most popular site of these – Freesound. Unfortunately, you already need to register for downloading, but it is, believe me, it is worth. In the same way, there is sorting by licenses, which is very, very convenient. But keep in mind that if you take sound effects in CC by, then every rustle, every noise must be mentioned in the credits. Well, or in Readme, well, at least somewhere, otherwise-theft! A good example of such meticulousness can be called the recently released puzzle Baba is you – there are every sound effect in the credits and their authors are mentioned with thorough accuracy:
When we pumped all the sounds-tricks, maybe you will want to change their format or somehow edit their format. Your protege in sound editors is not a mastak, so I will not say much on this topic, but I have been sitting firmly for a long time in the editor Audacy. It is not very powerful, but for the most basic manipulations with audio files, sufficiently. Of course, he’s free.
And, the last, and quite important: the format of the audio file. Always carefully look at what format the audio files of your project. Format .MP3 until 2017 was not free and required licensing (albeit often for a nominal price)! Formats .OGG and .WAV never required licensing and can be used in commercial projects for free.
Resources with 3D and 2D ases on the Internet are full and in such quantities that it is better to specify what is better and what is worse cannot. Unfortunately, my experience is nearing zero in this area, since I draw my graphics myself. The most popular options where to take free graphics from is ITCH and Craftpix. But, in fact, it is better to pervert and draw yourself or find a friend-artist. You do not make a murderer of castelvania, in the end?
Suitable graphic editors in memory two. It will come in handy here Paint.Net And GIMP. Wonderful free “drawings” with a large number of plugins and fins, which make them cooler than the standard “Paint” and in straight hands are approaching the functionality of such a mastodond as Photoshop.
Supplement for sale
The most dreary moment of all described earlier.
You can sell games yourself either through a distributor or through an intermediary-publisher. In the latter case, you need to show the game to several publishers, until one of them agrees to buy it on the conditions agreed between you. If you are noun and the project is not a breakthrough project, then no one except the inglorious Dagestan Technology will take your game, and you have only the first option – to go to the distributor personally.
There are exactly two serious offices now: Steam and ITCH.Io. The first with the introduction of Direct requires $ 100 for each game. Of course, if you are not quite a slag, then the game will pay off his $ 100, but the condition of Gamdev will be broken for a penny, then we go to itch.Io.
In order to sell games on ITCHE, you need to do two things: create a wallet on PayPal and tie a ruble account in the bank, as well as go through the Tax Interview of the US tax service, where you will be asked to indicate your mailing address (enter an additional postal index, if your address is not accepted) and swearing for your mother)You have any connections with America. Then you need to indicate your Russian TIN, hiding here under the abbreviation tin. At the end, you will be shown a completed tax form W-8BEN. Confirm the use of electronic signature on it, otherwise you will have to send a form by mail.
After connecting the PayPal wallet and passing a tax interview, you will be allowed to freely sell games. The whole process takes 2-3 days from force, maybe a week if you have not taken off. Feel free to call PayPal if you can’t do something, they will help to solve the problem. Your protege shamefully dared a month over a banal problem.
So, your game is ready and laid out in the white light, while you did not spend a penny. Foreign music, alien graphics, stranger engine. Yours are only an idea and realization (and time, but it was carried out with pleasure!). After the first sales, you can start knocking on publishers so that they help you go through Steam Direct, and get another penny or two.
“And how much have you earned?" – you ask. Well, with the exception of one copy sold – almost as much as I spent.
Karma.
P.WITH. “Will there be an advertisement for your game” – you ask. Well, only at the very end.